Joseph Perkins: You can clean up doing some 'dirty jobs'

Mike Rowe gets it. The host of the Discovery Channel series “Dirty Jobs” understands why so much of the American workforce is “underutilized,” meaning either unemployed or underemployed. It’s because of the “skills gap.”

“There are about three and a half million jobs available right now,” Rowe said recently on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Live.” “Ten percent of those jobs require a four year degree or better. That means about 90 percent of them require something else.”

That “something else” is vocational training.

And that’s why the cable TV star started a nonprofit foundation – MikeRoweWorks – to provide scholarships for trade school educations. Rowe’s goal, his website explains, “is to challenge the absurd belief that an expensive four-year education is the best path for the most people.”

Indeed, in just the past four years, student loan debt to the federal government increased a staggering 463 percent, the Treasury Department reported. Meanwhile, a study by Fidelity Investments found that 70 percent of the class of 2013 graduated with debt, averaging $35,200.

So what kind of return are recent college grads getting on their student debt? Well, in a Gallup poll in September, four in 10 said a degree wasn’t even necessary for the work they were doing. And in a survey by Accenture in April, 32 percent reported earning $25,000 or less.

That’s not to disparage higher education. It’s to agree with Rowe that college may not be the best path for some, if not most, kids.

That’s the obvious takeaway from a 2011 report by the nonprofit American Institutes for Research, which found that federal, state and local governments spent nearly $4 billion on full-time community college students who dropped out after their first year.

The poster state for such dropouts is California, where 70 percent of the more than 2.3 million high school graduates enrolled in the state’s 112 community colleges give up before either obtaining a two-year degree or transferring to a four-year university.

That’s because many, if not most, high school grads really have no desire to chase a college diploma. They would prefer, instead, to pursue a vocation. However, because there is a certain stigma attached to vocational training, to enrollment in trade schools, all too many young people surrender to the higher-education industrial complex.

Rowe recalled a recent conversation with the operator of a Tulsa, Okla., welding school that has companies dropping by every day, looking for prospective hires. “Can you give us 20? Can you give us 30? Can you give us 40?” they’d ask.

“The problem,” said Rowe “is supply, because, on the other end, you’ve got guidance counselors telling kids, ‘Hey, look, if you don’t study hard and get good grades, you’re liable to wind up welding.’ Well guess what? A good welder, [with] three years of experience, (can earn) 120, 130 grand a year.”

That’s more than double the average salary of a freshly minted college grad, reported the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

And welding is not an aberration. In fact, a report last year by the Bureau of Labor Statistics identified 80 occupations with median annual wages of more than $50,000 that require less than a bachelor’s degree. From loan officers to insurance appraisers, real estate brokers to construction and building inspectors, commercial pilots to commercial divers, and detectives and criminal investigators to fire inspectors and investigators.

All told, the 80 occupations will account for more than 15 million job openings from 2010-20, BLS projected.

And while that includes jobs that many college grads think beneath them – like welding – it also includes jobs that don’t require a four-year degree that can offer both fame and fortune.

Indeed, Wolfgang Puck, the celebrity chef, doesn’t have a college diploma. Nor does Hillary Swank, the Oscar-winning actress. Nor does Ralph Lauren, the fashion designer. Nor does Mark Begich, the U.S. senator from Alaska.

Higher education is not for everybody. And that’s why federal, state and local governments need to spend less on higher ed, and invest more in vocational ed.

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